Dear R community,
I have been using R for over 15 years. I want to raise an issue which has been
haunting me for some time now: It feels as if R is falling apart. I try to
justify this feeling by providing three discussion points:
1. Version compatibility issues seem to be on the rise. Very often, you get the
message that package x was built on R version y (and thus, won't work in your
version of R). When you update to the latest version of R, you realize that not
all packages are available for that version. It seems that for each version,
only a (non-predictable) subset of packages is available.
2. The overhead of installing new packages seems to be on the rise. It seems
that the packages depend on more and more other packages. The more packages you
have in the 'foundations' of package x, the more likely it is that one of these
causes an error and the whole stack fails. Installing used to be easy back in
the day: You got a 20 lines' output. Now you get endless prints. I may be
mistaken but some packages seem to require admin rights on your computer which
you don't often have on your work PC.
3. R seems to be developing into different dialects. You have dplyr and tidyr,
some people prefer data frames, some prefer tibbles. Some people use pipes,
some use traditional syntax. Some prefer object-oriented programs, some prefer
procedural scripts. If you put in a job announcement that somebody has to know
R, it doesn't mean the same thing for different people.
If you compare the use experience of R in 2025 to that of Matlab, the
difference is striking: Matlab is concise and clear, R is more and more about
endless prints. Of course, Matlab is a commerical product, but R used to be the
same way. I don't know if many other people feel the same way, but I think I am
shifting away from R.
yours best,a data analyst dude
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